Brussels  - The European Union could boycott a planned United Nations conference on racism, set for April 20, because of alleged anti-Western and anti-Semitic references in draft documents, the bloc's presidency said Monday.

"The EU will probably send suggestions. If the conference papers are in line with that we will stay, otherwise there is a strong call to withdraw," Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, whose country currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, said after talks with EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

The so-called UN Durban Review Conference, scheduled for April 20-24 in Geneva, is intended to assess the world's progress on combating racism as defined by a similar conference in Durban in 2001.

But fears have surfaced over recent weeks that the preparation for the conference has been dominated by Libya, Cuba and Iran, and that the documents they have drawn up are aggressively anti-Israeli and anti-Western.

"The documents allow us to conclude that it's not just about racism here, but that the conference could also be misused and produce very one-sided positions on, for example, the Middle East conflict or condemnations of European and American behaviour to the Arab and Muslim worlds," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.

He said that he was "pleading for us to cancel our participation in the conference if there is no really substantial change to the documents preparing this conference in the hours and days to come."

His Swedish counterpart, Carl Bildt, said that the EU "stands by the (Durban) process," but that it has "red lines."

Earlier this month, Italy became the first EU country to say it would be pulling out of the conference. The US, Israel and Canada are also boycotting it.

As long ago as December, UN officials said fears of a "hate fest" at the conference were unfounded. (dpa)